In value chains, e.g. supply chains, there are many individuals and entities, called partners throughout this patent application, serving a variety of roles and functions. In many instances, issues arise that require the knowledge and expertise of such partners in the supply or value chain. Often however, there exists a desire to conceal or keep hidden the identities of individuals and/or entities in the supply or value chain because the identity of these individuals and/or entities represents important know-how of another partner in the value chain. In the example where manufacturer A receives component parts from company B, and company B receives its materials for those parts from company C, company B may wish to keep the identity of company C concealed from manufacturer A to avoid that manufacturer A would decide to reduce costs by cutting out the middleman, i.e. company B in this example, and make the parts itself with material supplied by company C. In addition, companies B and C may be less likely to suggest innovative or new ideas if company A is actively or even passively involved in the brainstorming process. This can diminish the creativity of companies B and C, thereby weakening the value of their proposed solutions.
The knowledge to solve an issue or question, is often hidden in the value chain, in a sense that the initiator of a question/issue does not know the person who has the knowledge to answer. In the example above, Manufacturer A may have a question about the part received from company B, but does not know who needs to be involved to answer the question. It may be company C or even company D, a supplier of company D, etc. In many value chains, companies have no insight in their supply chains. Thus, to respond a question/solve an issue, one needs several parties to work together, while no single party involved would be able to tell who the entire team is. It must be possible to establish the team solving the issue organically, as each member of the value chain may involve just one other member to get access to the knowledge to solve the issue. The same is true for the sales side: if company A needs to solve a question about the use of their products by end-users, they may need to find the answer through the customers who on their turn invite other members downstream (or other stakeholders/partners) of the value chain.
The desire to maintain anonymity/confidentiality often hinders an individual or entity's ability to reach a solution to a particular problem. This is in particular the case when reaching such a solution requires collaborative involvement and knowledge of partners at different points along a supply or value chain. In many situations, creative initiatives, solutions, and business plans are quashed by the inability to transfer information in an efficient manner, enabling the anonymity of the various sources of information to be respected, and enabling the confidentiality of the exchanges of anonymous or known sources to be respected without sacrificing knowledge of the credibility or reliability of such sources.
Existing platforms that enable collaboration between partners in a value chain can be categorized as e-mail based platforms, project management systems, community platforms, ticketing systems, or supplier relationship management (SRM) systems. All of these existing platforms are disadvantageous as will be explained in more detail below. In particular, none of these existing platforms enable a partner in the value chain enable to involve second tier or second degree partners on a problem or sub-problem while keeping the identities of certain first tier partners hidden for such second degree partner and vice versa. Also, these systems typically do not allow members to invite others to become members at their discretion, and thus do not allow to really operate as self-directive connected virtual teams.
Collaboration platforms based on e-mail enable an initiator to create a message, eventually with attachments such as Excel files or Word documents. The initiator can send the message to a group of first degree partners and invite them to respond to the message. A first degree partner can forward the e-mail message to a second degree partner, not known or directly linked to the initiator of the message, when it is believed that collaboration or assistance of such second degree partners is desired in order to be able to respond to the initial message.
Although e-mail platforms allow to structure messages through forms, enable to insert a due date for a task or response, and feature forwarding capabilities, the link between message and response is rather weak. Usually, this link is established through the title or subject of the e-mail message and gets lost as soon as one partner in the forwarding chain tampers with these fields. E-mail based platforms further do not allow to prevent forwarding the identity of the initiator or other first degree partners. In the reverse direction, e-mail does not enable to prevent disclosing the identity of the second degree partner(s) that sourced part of the response. E-mail is further disadvantageous in that it does not enable to split a message or list in sub-messages thereby maintaining a link between the different elements of the message or list.
Project management systems are software platforms that allow to manage tasks within an organization, typically a corporate entity where cross-department collaboration is required. Project management systems enable to send tasks to users within a closed working environment. It is not possible for users of a project management system to invite additional, external individuals/entities, i.e. second level partners, to collaborate. Although project management systems allow splitting a task into sub-tasks and creating a team per sub-task, it is not possible to copy and forward a task or sub-task to have a different team work on the sub-task while keeping the identities of the initial team and the different team hidden to each other. Project management systems are further disadvantageous because they are designed and developed to manage tasks only. They do not allow handling of the related data structures such as structured information, questions, issues, ideas, tables, lists, etc.
Collaboration community platforms are web applications that enable users to invite others for collaboration with respect to a topic. Such platforms deliver collaboration tools like a chat tool, a web-based discussion space, audio/video conference tools, etc. to exchange ideas. It is however not possible to manage confidentiality within a collaboration community. The users cannot hide identities of first or second tier partners, and it is impossible to control the extent to which a user is allowed to forward information that is shared within such community. The known collaboration community platforms hence do not enable to conveniently split a message or inquiry in sub-messages, forward sub-messages to different teams while maintaining a link between the sub-messages and the initial message, and controlling confidentiality and concealment of identities of the partners between the different teams.
Ticketing systems are developed and used to facilitate operations and build knowledge of a support organization. Such systems enable to forward a message, i.e. an inquiry or issue, to other users, and to maintain a history list of already solved issues and responded messages.
Ticketing systems are however designed to constitute closed user systems as a result of which it is not possible to invite individuals from external organizations or entities to collaborate on an issue. The users of ticketing systems typically work in small teams. They forward a ticket from one user to another. It is not possible to generate lists or split tickets in sub-tickets and maintain a link between the initial ticket and eventual sub-tickets in order to enable different teams/users to work on sub-tickets and finally send back the solutions to sub-tickets back to the initiator. It is for sure also not possible in ticketing systems to forward tickets/sub-tickets while hiding the identity of for instance the initiator to the teams/users that are working on the forwarded ticket or sub-ticket. Ticketing systems are further limited in their ability to structure information that is shared: usually, a free text solution augmented with a description field is provided for messaging.
Supplier relationship management (SRM) systems provide functionality enabling to collect complex information from suppliers in the value chain of a company. SRM systems are typically used to distribute surveys/inquiries to different potential suppliers, follow-up and report on the comparison between the survey responses received from different potential suppliers. The contacted suppliers however cannot create an own workspace in such SRM system, copy inquiries or sub-inquiries and invite others to collaborate in responding to an inquiry. The SRM system and all information shared therein is owned and controlled by the buyer of the platform. This entity exclusively decides who can join and use the SRM platform. As a consequence, SRM platforms do not enable a flow of information/inquiries across plural levels of the supply chain.
In summary, there is a need for systems and methods that enable anonymous collaboration among different partners, e.g. individuals, entities, etc., of a supply or value chain relating to a message, e.g. an inquiry, issue, idea, etc., without sacrificing knowledge of the credibility or reliability of the information/response to the message. Existing e-mail platforms, project management systems, collaboration community web applications, ticketing systems, and SRM systems fail to provide an adequate solution.
The growing need for an environment where collaborators can share information and work without knowing each other's identity or contributions was already recognized in July 1994 in the article “Anonymous Collaboration: An Alternative Technique for Working Together” from author Andrew Lee. This article was published in SIGCHI Bulletin, Volume 26, Number 3, pages 40-46. Besides recognizing the problem and need for such environment, Andrew Lee also describes an ANOC (Anonymous Collaboration) based software tool that supports non real-time electronic discussion (page 43) and group authoring (page 45), but the described software rather implements a bulletin board wherein all contributors remain anonymous. This downgrades the credibility/reliability of the information. In many cases, such as for instance the question if a plastic toy contains potentially harmful plasticizers, the initiator of the question does need to receive the answer from a named/identified supplier, not from an anonymous source.
The closest prior art solution, United States Patent Application US 2011/0010425 entitled “Techniques for Enabling Anonymous Interactive Communication” and published on 13 Jan. 2011, describes a platform enabling two-way communication between parties wherein one party remains anonymous. In these systems, each party or user is assigned a non-anonymous ID and an anonymous ID. A first user can issue an electronic message or inquiry to a second user from his anonymous ID. The response from the second user addressed to the anonymous ID of the first user will be sent to central system that forwards the response to the first user without disclosing the identity of the first user to the second user. As is indicated by paragraph [0014] of US 2011/0010425, a message received by the second user (first tier partner) can be forwarded to a third user (second tier partner). Again, the second user can forward the message using his anonymous ID to thereby prevent disclosing his identity.
The system known from US 2011/0010425 is designed to increase effectiveness of surveys or campaigns (see paragraph [0003]). It requires assigning to each user two IDs upon registration: a non-anonymous ID and an anonymous ID. Each user can control concealment of his own identity by using his anonymous ID when sending/forwarding a message but it is not possible to conveniently control hiding the identities of other partners when forwarding messages or sub-messages across several tiers of the value chain. In other words, a company cannot hide the identities of its distributors when consulting its suppliers, unless these distributors have taken preventive actions to avoid disclosing their identities. The platform of US 2011/0010425 also does not enable to invite new, external partners to contribute, and it does not maintain a link between the initial message and forwarded messages/sub-messages. The system relies on the non-anonymous IDs and anonymous IDs of users to ripple back the responses to the initiator.
It is an objective of the present invention to disclose a platform and method for enabling anonymous collaboration between partners in a value chain that overcomes the above mentioned shortcomings of existing solutions. More particularly, it is an objective to disclose a collaboration platform and method that enable optionally anonymous/confidential collaboration between different partners of a supply or value chain without sacrificing the credibility or reliability of the information shared. It is a further objective to disclose such platform and method wherein a partner can conveniently create a message or sub-message and invite second level partners, not directly known by or linked to the initiator, to contribute thereby respecting the desire to hide the identities of certain partners when transferring messages/responses across different levels in the value chain. The present invention is directed towards technical solutions that address this and other needs, in addition to having other desirable characteristics that will be appreciated by one of skill in the art upon reading the present specification.